Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Teller Reveals His Secrets

smithsonianmag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 40 posts

Re: Teller Reveals His Secrets

#11

Post by zecho »

sedev wrote: post #4

"Make the secret a lot more trouble than the trick seems worth. You will be fooled by a trick if it involves more time, money and practice than you (or any other sane onlooker) would be willing to invest. My partner, Penn, and I once produced 500 live cockroaches from a top hat on the desk of talk-show host David Letterman. To prepare this took weeks. We hired an entomologist who provided slow-moving, camera-friendly…

There's a grave marker in Los Angeles for Penn and Teller with a 3 of Clubs on it. It's definitely one of their "make a trick a lot more trouble than it's worth" routines. The payoff is featured in one of their videos from the late 80s.

Re: Teller Reveals His Secrets

#13

Post by darksaga »

gdubs wrote: post #8

The coolest magic trick I've witnessed was at a small club in Los Angeles, by a regular of the magic castle. He had me pick a card and without showing him the card, he had me rip the card into pieces and asked me to tightly close my fist. He said he was going to reconstruct the card. I stared at my hand, keeping the fist clenched and waiting for a misdirection. He simply tapped my fist and asked me to open my hand. T…

There's a myriad of ways to do this, but usually through slight of hand, he slipped you the duplicate card which you thought was the ripped up version - when it reality, was a folded version.

Here's a great video of how this is done: http://bit.ly/yWQgQL

Re: Teller Reveals His Secrets

#14

Post by sc00ter »

zecho wrote: post #3

The real trick here is that Teller hasn't revealed anything new about the secrets of magic. One of the dirty secrets is that a magician does her best work with a willing audience. People want to be amazed. All magic requires misdirection, sure, but the audience is usually in a frame of mind that's willing to suspend disbelief for a moment long enough for the magician to exploit it. Think about how a street magician w…

"Magicians do the sleight of hand right in front of a crowd of people, in plain sight, but nobody notices."

Could you define "in plain sight" in this context? Are card manipulations that are almost impossible to detect, even when known and watched for considered "in plain sight", just because they don't happen "out of frame" to use Teller's term. If so, it isn't "because you don't want to notice", it's because you can't see them even if you're looking.

And what of the crafty moves that do happen in plain sight, but are genuinely missed due to misdirection (selective attention) [1]. This isn't because you don't want to notice either. (Amusingly, at first glance I missed the hand dipping in Tellers back pocket in the photo sequence accompanying the article, because I was concentrating on the cards in Teller's hand).

Suspension of disbelief relates to the enjoyment of the effect in the full knowledge that it is an illusion, not that you willfully ignore the mechanics of an illusion that are otherwise apparent (although this can be a fun manipulation of the audience when the mechanism is apparently unintentionally revealed allowing the audience to "catch the magician out" , but subsequently shown to be inconsequential to the effect, catching the audience out in return).

There are exceptions - Penn & Teller's cups and balls springs to mind - where the joy is in watching just how much more trouble "the secret [is] than the trick seems worth". [2]

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSQJP40PcGI

[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrw3euF2cIg

Re: Teller Reveals His Secrets

#15

Post by terinjokes »

darksaga wrote: post #13
gdubs wrote: post #8

The coolest magic trick I've witnessed was at a small club in Los Angeles, by a regular of the magic castle. He had me pick a card and without showing him the card, he had me rip the card into pieces and asked me to tightly close my fist. He said he was going to reconstruct the card. I stared at my hand, keeping the fist clenched and waiting for a misdirection. He simply tapped my fist and asked me to open my hand. T…

There's a myriad of ways to do this, but usually through slight of hand, he slipped you the duplicate card which you thought was the ripped up version - when it reality, was a folded version. Here's a great video of how this is done: http://bit.ly/yWQgQL

In the parent's description, it doesn't sound like he ever gave the card back to the magician. He himself ripped the card, then immediately keeping the pieces tight in his fist.

Re: Teller Reveals His Secrets

#17

Post by darksaga »

terinjokes wrote: post #15
darksaga wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a myriad of ways to do this, but usually through slight of hand, he slipped you the duplicate card which you thought was the ripped up version - when it reality, was a folded version. Here's a great video of how this is done: http://bit.ly/yWQgQL

In the parent's description, it doesn't sound like he ever gave the card back to the magician. He himself ripped the card, then immediately keeping the pieces tight in his fist.

An easy way to do this is to have the folded card in your right hand (palmed), you place the ripped pieces in the same hand, but hold them with your fingers. You look like your folding the pieces up, then make the switch as you place it in his hand, fold it up and tell him to hold it tight.

Of course this is done in one fluid motion, so he doesn't see the slight of hand switch - like the guy does at the very end of the video.

Re: Teller Reveals His Secrets

#19

Post by vilius »

"It’s hard to think critically if you’re laughing."

I find this very useful while giving speeches. Most of the audience are quite critical before you can prove yourself worth their time. Putting an appropriate joke beforehand helps to grab their approval earlier.

OFF-TOPIC: Copying any part of the article automatically adds the url of an article to the clipboard. This is first time, I've seen this, very annoying!

Re: Teller Reveals His Secrets

#20

Post by wtn »

bostonvaulter2 wrote: post #9
sedev wrote: post #4

"Make the secret a lot more trouble than the trick seems worth. You will be fooled by a trick if it involves more time, money and practice than you (or any other sane onlooker) would be willing to invest. My partner, Penn, and I once produced 500 live cockroaches from a top hat on the desk of talk-show host David Letterman. To prepare this took weeks. We hired an entomologist who provided slow-moving, camera-friendly…

I do, in fact it reminds me of Apple's recent presentation to Gruber that was so well rehearsed even though the audience was a single person: http://daringfireball.net/2012/02/mountain_lion

I wish Apple would try half as hard fixing the bugs in the software they sell as they do pitching it.
Post reply on HN